jjjalljs

@jjjalljs@ttrpg.network

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨place yer bets⁩ ⁨⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  Everyone saying “they can evacuate” clearly doesn’t remember how bad the covid response was.

  There will be anti-space conspiracy theorists. The ownership class would demand people continue working until the last possible minute (and beyond). It would be politicized, because some people are unbelievably stupid, cruel, and selfish, and enough people are so stupid they’ll buy in.

  Now, if we could make the meteor fall on a location occupied solely by the people who don’t believe in science…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Rockstar has some of the most restrictive mission design I've ever experienced⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m reminded of the abyssal words in Elden Ring’s expansion. There are signs that tell you “Don’t let them see you!” and “You have to hide and run!”. You find an area with some tall grass and some creepy eye-monsters. And sure enough, if they see you they come running at you. They’ll knock you over, grab you, and explode your head.

  Clearly you’re supposed to sneak by them.

  But…

  spoiler

  You can also parry their attack, and then just kill them. Or just fucking book it and run past them, but that’s way harder.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Opinion | If Trump Triggers a Constitutional Crisis, No Part of Society Can Remain Silent⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe if the New York Times wasn’t such a blandly conservative institution things would be mildly better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What we all want deep down⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  There are some people who want to be wealthy to the tune of flaunting it, making other people figuratively or literally bow down to them. Those people should not be allowed to have power.

  If I was somehow a billionaire, I like to think I’d be spending my money on socially useful stuff. More libraries. More infrastructure. Housing. Can an ultra rich person essentially run public housing and transit, at least on a city-wide scale? Probably. but the kind of person who gets to be ultra rich is probably an asshole.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ye Takes Back Apology and Calls Himself a Nazi in Social Media Rant⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t really want to live in a world of vigilante violence, but I wouldn’t be that mad if someone was like “I’m a nazi I love hitler”, sincerely, or even just trolling, and someone shot them dead. Putting up with hate is a mistake.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘We Have No Coherent Message’: Democrats Struggle to Oppose Trump⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  The Republican party is the far right. The Democratic party is almost everyone else- less far right, moderate, center-left, a handful of lefties. It’s not surprising they don’t have cohesion.

  Also the American public seems especially stupid. That’s probably aggravated by decades of right wing media and insufficient investing in education. But maybe everywhere has a lot of stupid people and we’re not exceptional on this point.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Guild Wars 2 in 2025 is a MASTERPIECE⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s the only MMO I’ve played that doesn’t routinely irritate me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Fucking Hell NY Times can you please just not be a myopic piece of shit and actually call a nazi a nazi. All of this enabling hang-wringing pearl-clutching nonsense is part of how we got in this problem.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We could do a lot for climate change, world hunger, homelessness, disease prevention and eradication, and so on with that much money.

  All of these people are doing mass murder via opportunity cost, and I hope they pay for it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Corinne Busche, director of Dragon Ave: The Veilguard, departs BioWare⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  teenager who acts like a dick all the time would be equally annoying.

  Was Morrigan popular when da:o was new? She’s an extremely edgy teenager.

  This topic would be great for a dontnod game that could appropriatly handle that topic - not an RPG.

  I really don’t think queer stuff needs to be banished from the realm of RPGs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Corinne Busche, director of Dragon Ave: The Veilguard, departs BioWare⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Most people I talked to have refunded the game on steam. Nobody really had fun with it, except for one person that was completely new to dragon age. However, I don’t think she finished it either.

  Meanwhile, the 3 people I know who played it all enjoyed it. Anecdotes!

  I don’t think so. The writing of Taash was so bad and uncomfortable for the most part that I genuinely didn’t know if they were trying to mock trans-people with this representation. It felt like they were just looking at a terminally online twitter user and modeled the character after that. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that taash is the worst character I’ve ever experienced in a triple A production.

  Taash’s scenes seemed okay to me. The storyline with their mother is pretty close to what a friend of mine is going through now.

  I don’t know how to solve this problem, but I kind of don’t believe what people say. I mean, I think sometimes they dislike a thing for reason A, but the words that come out are reason B. They say a character is badly written (B), but really they find the queer subject matter uncomfortable (A). This may or may not be the case, but fundamentally I do not believe the average internet video game fan has the introspection and honesty to say “A” here. There’s no way to know.

  Veilguard, on the other hand, doesn’t get better. It just stays bad and even confusing at times.

  My problem with Veilguard is the difficulty fell off a cliff and never climbed back up. Other than that it was fine.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Look Ma, No Batteries! Hands On With Lenovo's Self-Charging Keyboard⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Huh. That’s neat I guess.

  My initial guess was it would somehow capture the energy from hitting keys. I guess that’s implausible? Too little energy without making the key press resistance too high?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the greatest joy you have gotten from a video game?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Flawlessly clearing Genichiro in Sekiro was deeply satisfying. Parry parry parry, dodge, mikiri counter. Don’t think I got hit once.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mildly McInfuriating⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It would never even occur to me to eat at fast food (unless you count like the pizza by the slice place on the corner).

  I just feel so alienated from everyone else sometimes. Just… The food isn’t good, isn’t good for you, isn’t cheap, isn’t fast. The org isn’t environmentally or politically friendly. Just stop eating there. Be mildly inconvenienced if you have to.

  But I guess that will slam right into the constant problem of “someone feels bad and now they’re not going to listen”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the deal with male loneliness?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t disagree with anything here, really. As we both said, some responsibility remains on the user.

  I do think Match is aggravating the situation. Men aren’t getting traction so they search for why. They find right wing MRA stuff saying that it’s women’s fault blah blah blah, but really part of why they’re not getting hits is because Match is hiding them unless you pay (and even then maybe).

  Part of why may also be they’re creeps or bad at dating. It is not wholly the apps’ fault. But I do think they’re making it harder for people to connect, and that can be the top of the funnel for far right ideas.

  And I do think a lot of people are on the apps when they aren’t really ready. People of all genders. But that’s a separate topic, probably.

  Anyway. Good talk. Amusingly , I’m heading out to meet someone from a dating app. Here’s hoping they don’t think I’m a creep!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the deal with male loneliness?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There was a meme the other day about how Aragorn from lotr is the kind of male role model men need. Kind, shows his emotions, strong without being cruel.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the deal with male loneliness?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I was thinking the other day there’s probably a pretty straight line between Match group owning so many dating apps, men’s unhappiness, and violence.

  Like the apps create the illusion that you can meet someone and be happy, but their primary goal is to make money. They don’t try very hard to introduce you to good matches. They also haven’t solved the experience from the woman’s point of view. So men feel like they’re just shouting into the void, that people don’t like them, etc etc. Some of those people likely go on to become incels or do violence.

  This isn’t to say that violent men are not culpable. They are. They retain agency. But Match group (that’s tinder, okcupid, hinge, match, plenty of fish, and more) is making the problem worse.

  It’s like if there was a food shortage, and someone bought up all the grocery stores. Then they made all of them mazes and had half the cereal boxes empty.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dungeons & Dragons Rolls the Dice With New Rules About Identity⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The old racial bonuses aren’t entirely based on inherent ability, but also on culture and upbringing. Dwarves don’t only have high constitution because they’re born sturdy, their culture is based around mining and building.

  So de-couple that from species and move it into background. There are easy solutions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dungeons & Dragons Rolls the Dice With New Rules About Identity⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  The old system was restrictive and kind of boring. Playing off-type meant mechanical penalties, so you didn’t see a lot of orc wizards or paladins.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what was the last game you played in 2024?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Last game I finished was Veilguard. Pretty close to EoY. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, and the difficulty falls off a cliff as a mage when you get life steal, but it wasn’t bad. The romance with Neve was entirely too… unromantic, and PG-13 though. Very disappointing. No intimacy.

  Then I started CrossCode and it’s been good. Feels like a mix of old snes games (Zelda, lufia2) and MMO, without the annoying parts like other players. The puzzles also aren’t very hand holdy, which is nice. I feel like a lot of games are too aggressive with their “HEY IT LOOKS LIKE YOU CAN SLIDE THAT BRICK. HEY I BET FIRE MELTS ICE.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what was the last game you played in 2024?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I like that they did turn based but I didn’t actually like it that much. There are too many trash fights. I think one of the developers suggested a mod to cut HP so they go faster.

  I also don’t really like the “one action per turn” model (as in DND) and kind of would have preferred action points (as in divinity).

  But overall I’m a big fan of Deadfire, and I’m bummed they’re not making a third one.

  I think the most fun I had was with chanter. Just hang out and summon dudes that wreck shit. Slap on the heaviest armor you want and just scream at people until they’re dead.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is Half-Life Opposing Force still known to current gamers, or is this a side game that's fallen through the cracks.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I remember realizing all the names are science terms and being like “oh that’s clever”

  Kind of like it more than the usual “throw darts at a fantasy word board” that produces like Dark Age, Dragon Priest, Eternal Soul, etc

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After years of holding out hope, 2024 was the year I finally gave up on BioWare⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been playing it and enjoying it. It could be better. Most games could. I had kind of low expectations, honestly. I’m glad it’s a single player game with no live-service and no season-pass. I’ll probably play it a second time. Runs kind of like crap, so I might play it again in the distant future where I have better hardware.

  I imagine a lot of internet duds are mad about how there’s a queer subplot, but they can go fuck themselves. Unfortunately, this creates a problem where if some random guy is bashing it I have to try to suss out if they’re really just mad about queer stuff. It’s hard to tell. And because we’re all just emotional idiots, some people might be mad about the queer stuff and not realize it, and the words that come out of their mouth will be “boring characters”.

  But also a lot of their games have problems. Mass Effect 3’s ending is so bad it has its own wikipedia page.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Looking for coop RPGs⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Guild Wars2 is very good.

  It downscales your level if you go back to older areas, so you can play with lower level friends. (Though it’s still pretty generous, and the high level friends will be more effective). So if your friends aren’t playing much, you can still coop with them when they do play.

  There’s a lot of content. Most of the maps have stuff just happening. There’s also instanced content for 5, 10, or … I think private convergences can go up to 20?

  There’s not really a gear grind. When you hit max level (which is pretty easy) good-enough gear is very easy to get. A smidge better than that is a little expensive but still very feasible. The fanciest gear is numerically the same, but let’s you reskin and swap stats for free, which is nice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is your Game of the Year?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I… I played a lot of guild wars 2. It’s a good game!

  But about 40 games total. I don’t want to be a mono-gamer so that’s nice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Coming soon – offline speech recognition on your phone⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t think I’ve ever desired to have speech as an interface for a device.

  Yeah, I could yell at it “Open the browser and go to uhh the order of the stick comic index page” and maybe it would get it right. Or I could just… click on the browser, type oot and pick it from the drop down. Faster, no error, no expensive processing.

  I don’t drive (cars are a bad form of transit and I’m lucky enough to not need one) and I’m not hands-full in the kitchen often.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨RFK Jr.’s Lawyer Has Asked the FDA to Revoke Polio Vaccine Approval⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I would nullify if I was on the jury and Something happened to this dangerous idiot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Epic’s holiday sale includes 16 free games this year⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I haven’t looked into how epic works on Linux, but I assume not as nicely as steam. So it’s kind of a non starter now

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Writing tip: just start brain dumping⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I don’t grade papers, but I imagine a bit of flavor stands out favorably from all the other very generic writings.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Bumper sticker⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not going to try to change your mind here. Changing someone’s mind means taking care to massage their emotions, make them feel good about themselves and you, and get them to make the decisions on their own for their own reasons. It’s a lot of work. I’m going to skip it.

  Have you considered that you might be stupid? I’m not joking. Seriously. Because “I haven’t personally seen it, so I don’t think it’s real” in this kind of context, maybe most contexts, is weapons grade stupid. What else don’t you believe in? Bacteria? France? Submarines?

  When you’re done being mad about being insulted, en.wikipedia.org/…/Violence_against_transgender_p… might be a good entry point.